The Nbew York Times

Friday, December 10, 1999

Serbian Court Sentences Kosovar Activist to 12 Years in Prison

By CARLOTTA GALL

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A Serbian court sentenced Flora Brovina, Kosovo's leading poet and a noted campaigner for women's rights, Thursday to 12 years in prison on charges of terrorism committed during the NATO air campaign in Kosovo.

Ms. Brovina, 50, a pediatrician, headed the Albanian League of Women in Kosovo and ran a clinic for women and children. She was arrested in April in the Kosovar capital, Pristina, at the height of the NATO bombing and has been detained ever since.

Accused of aiding the separatist guerrilla movement, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was fighting Serbian forces in the province, she is the most prominent political prisoner among the nearly 2,000 Kosovar Albanians now in Serbian prisons.

Ms. Brovina made a moving appeal in her defense Thursday. "As a humanitarian and a poet, it was my duty to join in the emancipation of Albanian women in Kosovo," she said.

And in a reference to the climate of revenge that is engulfing Kosovo, she said: "I dedicated all my life to children who do not know they have a nationality until their parents tell them. I am sorry I am in jail because I cannot help to have an influence or help displaced people return to their homes and to influence Serbs and Albanians towards reconciliation."

Barbara Davis, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights representative in Serbia, who attended the trial in the Southern Serbian town of Nis, described Ms. Brovina as dignified during the reading of the sentence.

"Her closing statement was very moving," Ms. Davis said. She quoted Ms. Brovina as saying: "'I regret the prosecution has so minimized the role of women in the world. I have been accused of wanting to change borders and unite Kosovo and Albania. My poems have been translated into Serbian, and many other languages and for me my homeland is where my poetry is read."'

The severity of the sentence shocked lawyers and human rights representatives attending the trial. They had hoped to see a much more lenient sentence, and said that the prosecution had produced little evidence to support the charges.

At the first hearing last month, Ms. Brovina spoke in her own defense and described her activities in Kosovo as purely humanitarian, helping women and children and trying to raise health standards. She also stressed her anti-war activities, such as organizing peace marches.

But at the trial Thursday the prosecution suddenly moved to change the indictment and raise the severity of the charges, Ms. Davis said. "The new charge was based on her undertaking activities for the Kosovo Liberation Army during the NATO bombing," she said.

In her defense, Ms. Brovina said she had been sick with angina at the time and semi-paralyzed and thus incapable of helping the guerrilla movement. She pointed out that when she was arrested outside her apartment in Pristina, the police allowed her to retrieve her heart medicine from her home.

The prosecution then produced as testimony a 10-page statement signed by Ms. Brovina while in police custody in Pristina. Ms. Brovina said she had never been allowed to read the statement and denied the contents.

She said she had been interrogated 18 times after her arrest, usually from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., during which time she was neither fed nor allowed to rest, and was moved from house to house during the NATO bombing. "I was completely exhausted and in such a condition that I would have confessed to anything," she said in court.

Asked about her treatment by police, she said, "I am grateful that they only hit me once."

Ms Davis said that "We worked out she underwent 226 hours of interrogation, deprived of food and sleep." She added, "I think I would call that 'under coercion,"' referring to Ms. Brovina's statement made in custody.

Natasa Kandic, of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center, said the evidence produced in court had not been enough to support such a sentence. "It was a political trial, she was punished as revenge for being an activist during the NATO bombardment," she said.

Ms. Kandic called for an amnesty for all Albanians imprisoned in Serbia, saying that the sentence Thursday was a step backwards for the country and that the authorities were clinging to a pretense that they still had jurisdiction over Kosovo.